My Week In Malawi

I’ve worked for Mobal for 18 years, but never had the chance to visit our charity in Blantyre, Malawi up until now. I’ve just been there for a week; it was pretty amazing!

There’s a lot going on, but one of the biggest projects is the construction of a new building to expand the capabilities of the Beehive Centre (our charity base over there). The new building will be used for IT training and providing jobs through IT outsourcing solutions. As you can see from the photo, there is still a lot of work to be done, but everything is coming along well. We’re about to invest in new IT equipment for the building, so students and staff have the latest technology.

The new building will complement our other facilities on site, and will mean we can provide more jobs and training to the community.

In Malawi, they don’t have access to steel scaffolding, so they improvise with wood.
While it looks pretty rickety, it’s actually very well built and strong.

We make our buildings from hydrafom bricks that we make on site. Traditional bricks are made by firing in charcoal ovens, which causes pollution issues and a huge problem with local deforestation. Our hydrafom bricks are made by compressing a mixture of soil, a small amount of cement and water. No fire is needed, so it’s a really sustainable way to make bricks. Not only that – it’s easy and quick to build – the bricks are stacked like Lego without the use of cement.

Even though the outside isn’t completed and there is no roof yet, the work on the inside is well under way.
You can see how the scaffolding is secured to the building from the inside.

All this has been built using profits from Mobal, so we’d like to thank all our customers for their support. By using Mobal’s services, you really are helping to make a difference to people in one of the world’s poorest country.